DESIGNS FOR WORKING - Malcolm Gladwell

In the early nineteen-sixties, Jane Jacobs
lived on Hudson St re e t ,in Gre e nw
i ch Vi ll a g e, near the intersection of
Eighth Avenue and Bleecker St re e t .I t
was then, as now, a ch a rming d i s t rict of
n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u y rtenements
and tow n
h o u s e s ,bars and shops,laid outover an irregular
gri d ,and Jacobs loved the neighb
o rh o o d .In her 1961 masterp i e c e,“T h e
Death and Life of G reat Am e ri can Citi
e s , ”she rh a p s o d i zed about the Wh i t e
Horse Ta ve rn down the block ,h ome to
Irish lon g s h o remen and writers and int
e llectuals—a place where, on a winter’s
n i g h t ,as “the doors open, a solid wave of
c onve r s a t i on and animation surges out
and hits yo u . ”Her Hudson St reet had
M r. Sl u b e, at the cigar store, and Mr.
La c ey, the lock s m i t h , and Bern i e, t h e
ca n d y - s t o re ow n e r, w h o,in the course of
a typ i cal day, s u p e rvised the ch i l d re n
DEPT. OF HUMAN RESOURCES
DESIGNS FOR WORKING
Wh y y o u r b o s s e sw a n t t o tu rn y o u r n ew o f fic e i n t oGre e n w i ch Vi l l a ge.
6 0 THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 11, 2000
BY MALCOLM GLADWELL
c rossing the stre e t , lent an umbre lla or
a d o llar to a custom e r, held on to som e
k eys or packages for people in the neighb
o rh o o d ,and “l e c t u red two yo u n g s t e r s
who asked for cigare t t e s . ”The street had
“b u n dles and pack a g e s ,z i g zagging from
the drug store to the fruit stand and back
over to the butch e r’s , ”a n d “ t e e n a g e r s ,a ll
d ressed up, a re pausing to ask if t h e i r
slips show or their collars look ri g h t . ”I t
w a s ,she said, an urban ball e t .
The mira cle of H u d s on St re e t ,a cc
o rding to Jacobs, was created by the
p a rticular con fig u ra t i on of the stre e t s
and buildings of the neighborh o o d .J acobs
argued that when a neighborh o o d
is oriented tow a rd the stre e t ,when sidewalks
are used for socializing and play
and com m e rc e, the users of that stre e t
a re tra n s f o rmed by the resulting stimul
a t i on :t h ey form re l a t i onships and ca s u a l
c ontacts they would never have otherw
i s e .The West Vi ll a g e,she pointed out,
was blessed with a mixture of h o u s e s
and apartments and shops and offic e s
and industry, w h i ch meant that there
w e re alw ays people “outdoors on diffe rent
schedules and . ..in the place for diffe
rent purp o s e s . ”It had short block s ,a n d
s h o rt blocks create the greatest vari e ty in
foot tra f fic .It had lots of old buildings,
and old buildings have the low rents that
p e rmit individualized and cre a t i ve uses.
An d ,most of a ll ,it had people,cheek by
j ow l ,f rom eve ry conceivable walk of l i fe .
Sp a re ly populated suburbs may look app
e a l i n g, she said, but without an act
i ve sidewalk life, without the fre q u e n t ,
s e rendipitous intera c t i ons of m a ny diffe
rent people, “ t h e re is no public acq
u a i n t a n c e s h i p,no foundation of p u b l i c
t ru s t ,no cro s s - c on n e c t i ons with the nece
s s a ry people—and no practice or ease
in applying the most ord i n a ry techniques
of c i ty public life at low ly leve l s . ”
Jane Jacobs did not win the battle she
set out to fig h t .The West Vi llage re m a i n s
an anom a ly.Most developers did not want
to build the kind of c om mu n i ty Jacobs
talked about,and most Am e ri cans didn’t
want to live in on e .To re read “Death and
L i fe” t o d ay, h ow eve r, is to be stru ck by
h ow the intervening years have given her
arguments a new and unexpected re l ev
a n c e .Wh o,a fter all ,has a direct intere s t
in creating dive r s e, vital spaces that foster
cre a t i v i ty and sere n d i p i ty? Employ -
ers do. On the fortieth annive r s a ry of i t s
p u b l i ca t i on ,“Death and Life” has been
re b o rn as a primer on workplace design.
The para llels between neighborh o o d s
and offices are stri k i n g.T h e re was a time,
for instance, when companies put their
most valued employees in palatial offic
e s, with potted plants in the corn e r,
and secre t a ries out fron t ,g u a rding access.
Those offices were suburbs—gated commu
n i t i e s ,in fact—and many com p a n i e s
came to re a l i ze that if their best employees
were isolated in suburbs they would
be depri ved of public acquaintanceship,
the foundations of public tru s t ,and cro s sc
on n e c t i ons with the necessary people.
In the eighties and early nineties, t h e
f a s h i on in corp o rate Am e ri ca was to foll
ow what designers ca lled “u n i ve r s a l
p l a n n i n g” — rows of i d e n t i cal cubicl e s ,
w h i ch resembled nothing so mu ch as a
Lev i t t ow n .To d ay, u n i versal planning has
f a llen out of f a v o r, for the same re a s on

6 2 THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 11, 2000
“Life isn’t fair, M i l f o rd, and that’s what makes it fun.”
that the postwar suburbs like Lev i t t ow n
d i d :to thri ve,an office space must have a
di ve r s i ty of uses—it must have the workplace
equivalent of houses and apartments
and shops and industry.
I f you visit the tech n o l o gy com p a n i e s
o f Si l i c on Va ll ey,or the media com p a n i e s
o f M a n h a t t a n ,or any of the firms that
s e l f - c on s c i o u s y lidentify
themselves with
the New Econ om y, yo u’ll find that secluded
private offices have been re p l a c e d
by busy public spaces, open-plan are a s
without wall s , e xe c u t i ves next to the
n ewest hire s .The hush of the tra d i t i on a l
o f fice has been supplanted by som e t h i n g
mu ch closer to the noisy,bustling ballet of
H u d s on St re e t .Fo rty years ago, p e o p l e
l i ved in neighborhoods like the West Vi llage
and went to work in the equivalent of
s u b u rb s .Now, in one of the odd reve r s a l s
that mark the current econ om y, t h ey live
in suburbs and,i n c re a s i n g y,go l to work in
the equivalent of the West Vi ll a g e .
The office used to be imagined as a
place where employees punch cl o ck s
and bosses roam the halls like highs
chool pri n c i p a l s ,l o oking for miscre a n t s .
But when employees sit chained to their
d e s k s , q u i e t ly and industri o u s ly go i n g
about their business,an office is not func
t i oning as it should. T h a t’s because inn
ov a t i on—the heart of the know l e d g e
e c on omy—is fundamentally social.I d e a s
a rise as mu ch out of casual conve r s a t i on s
as they do out of f o rmal meetings.M o re
p re c i s e ly, as one study after another has
d e m on s t ra t e d the , best ideas in any workplace
arise out of casual contacts amon g
d i f fe rent groups within the same comp
a ny. I f you are designing widgets for
Ac m e . c om,for instance,it is unlikely that
a bre a k t h rough idea is going to come
• •
f rom som e one else on the widget team:
a fter all , the other team members are as
b l i n k e red by the day - t o - d ay demands of
dealing with the existing product as yo u
a re .Som e one from outside Ac m e . c om —
your old engineering pro fe s s o r, or a guy
you used to work with at Ap e x . c om —
i s n’t going to be that helpful, e i t h e r. A
p e r s on like that doesn’t know enough
about Ac m e’s widgets to have a tru ly
useful idea.The most useful insights are
l i k e ly to come from som e one in custom e r
s e rv i c e,who hears firsthand what widget
c u s t omers have to say, or from som e on e
in mark e t i n g,who has wrestled with the
p roblem of h ow to explain widgets to
n ew users,or from som e one who used to
w o rk on widgets a few years back and
whose work on another Acme pro d u c t
has given him a fresh perspective .I n n ov
a t i on comes from the intera c t i ons of
people at a com f o rtable distance from
one another, neither too close nor too far.
This is why—quite apart from the matter
of logistics and effic i e n cy — c om p a n si
e
h a ve offices to begin with. T h ey go to
the trouble of g a t h e ring their employe e s
under one ro o f b e cause they want the
widget designers to bump into the people
in marketing and the people in cust
omer service and the guy who moved to
another depart m e n t a few years back .
The ca t ch is that getting people in an
o f fice to bump into people from another
d e p a rtment is not so easy as it look s .I n
the sixties and seve n t i e s ,a re s e a rcher at
M . I . T. named T h omas Allen con d u c t e d
a deca d e - l ong study of the way in which
engineers com mu n i cated in re s e a rch -
a n d - d eve l o pment labora t o ri e s . A ll e n
found that the likelihood that any tw o
people will com mu n i cate drops off d ram
a t i ca ly as the distance between their

6 4 THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 11, 2000
desks incre a s e s :we are four times as likely
to com mu n i cate with som e one who sits
six feet away from us as we are with someone
who sits sixty feet away. And people
seated more than seve n ty - five feet apart
h a rdly talk at all .
A ll e n’s second finding was even more
d i s t u rb i n g. When the engineers were n’t
talking to those in their immediate vicini
ty, m a ny of t h e mspent their time talking
to people o u t s i d etheir com p a ny — t o
their old computer-science pro fessor or
the guy they used to work with at Ap p l e .
He con cluded that it was actually easier to
make the outside ca ll than to walk acro s s
the ro om .I f you con s t a n t ly ask for advice
or guidance from people inside your org
a n i za t i on ,a fter all ,you risk losing pre st
i g e .Your colleagues might think you are
i n c om p e t e n t .The people you keep a s king
for advice might get annoyed at yo u .
C a lling an outsider avoids these pro bl
e m s .“The engineer can easily excuse his
l a ck of k n owledge by pretending to be
an ‘e x p e rt in something else’ who needs
s ome help in ‘b roadening into this new
a re a , ’” A llen wro t e .He did his study in
the days before E-mail and the Intern e t ,
but the advent of digital com mu n i ca t i on
has made these problems worse. A ll e n’s
engineers were far too willing to go outside
the com p a ny for advice and new
i d e a s .E-mail makes it even easier to talk
to people outside the com p a ny.
The task of the offic e, t h e n ,is to i nvite
a particular kind of social intera ct
i on—the ca s u a l , n on t h reatening encounter
that makes it easy for re l a t i ve
s t rangers to talk to each other. O f fic e s
need the sort of social milieu that Jane
Jacobs found on the sidewalks of t h e
West Vi ll a g e .“It is possible in a city stre e t
n e i g h b o rhood to know all kinds of p e ople
without unw e l c ome entanglements,
without bore d om ,n e c e s s i ty for exc u s e s ,
e x p l a n a t i on s fears , of giving offe n s e,e mb
a r rassments respecting impositions or
c om m i t m e n t s ,and all such para ph e rn alia
of o b l i g a t i ons which can accom p a ny
less limited re l a t i on s h i p s , ”Jacobs wro t e .
I f you substitute “o f fic e” for “c i ty stre e t
n e i g h b o rh o o d , ”that sentence becom e s
the perfect statement of what the mode
rn employer wants from the work p l a c e .
Imagine a classic big-city office tow e r,
with a floor plate of a hundred and
e i g h ty feet by a hundred and eighty fe e t .
The center part of eve ry floor is give n

over to the guts of the building: e l ev at
o r s , b a t h ro om s ,e l e c t ri cal and plumbing
sys t e m s .A round the core are cubicles
and interior offic e s ,for support staff
and lower management.And around the
edges of the flo o r, against the window s ,
a re rows of o f fices for senior staff, e a ch
ro om perhaps two hundred or two hund
red and fifty square fe e t .The best res
e a rch about office com mu n i ca t i on tell s
us that there is almost no worse way to
l ay out an offic e . The exe c u t i ve in on e
c o rner office will seldom bump into any
other exe c u t i ve in a corner offic e .I n d e e d,
s t ringing the exterior offices out alon g
the window s g u a rantees that there will
be ve ry few people within the cri t i ca l
s i x ty-foot radius of those offic e s .To maxi
m i ze the amount of c ontact among emp
l oye e s ,you re a lly ought to put the most
valuable staff members in the center of
the ro om ,w h e re the highest number of
people can be within their orb i t .O r,eve n
b e t t e r, put all places where people tend
to con g re g a t e—the public areas—in the
c e n t e r, so they can draw from as many
d i s p a rate parts of the com p a ny as possib
l e .Is it any wonder that cre a t i ve firm s
o ften pre fer loft - s tyle buildings, w h i ch
h a ve usable centers?
Another way to increase com mu n i cat
i on is to have as few private offices as
p o s s i b l e. The idea is to exchange pri -
vate space for public space, just as in the
West Vi ll a g e, w h e re residents agree to
l i ve in tiny apartments in exchange for a
wealth of n e a rby cafés and stores and
bars and park s. The West Vi ll a g ef o rc e s
its residents outdoors. Few people, f o r
e x a m p l e, h a ve a washer and dryer in
their apart m e n t ,and so even laundry is
n e c e s s a ri ly a social eve n t : you have to
take your clothes to the laundromat dow n
the stre e t . In the office equivalent, d esigners
force employees to move aro u n d ,
t o o.T h ey build in “f u n c t i onal ineffic i e nc
i e s ” ;t h ey put kitchens and copiers and
p rinters and libra ries in places that ca n
be re a ched on ly by a circuitous journ ey.
A m o re direct appro a ch is to create an
o f fice so flexible that the kinds of p e o p l e
who need to spon t a n e o u s ly interact ca n
a c t u a lly be brought together. For e x -
a m p l e, the Fo rd Motor Com p a ny, a l ong
with a group of re s e a rchers from the
U n i ve r s i ty of M i ch i g a n ,re c e n t ly conducted
a pilot project on the effe c t i ve n e s s
o f “war ro om s ”in softw a re deve l o pm e n t .
Prev i o u s ly, s om e one inside the com p a ny
who needed a new piece of s o ftw a re
written would have a series of m e e t i n g s
with the com p a ny’s pro g ra m m e r s ,a n d
the client and the pro g rammers would
send messages back and fort h . In th e
w a r - ro om study,the com p a ny move dt h e
cl i e n t ,the pro g ra m m e r s ,and a manager
into a dedicated con fe rence ro om ,a n d
made them stay there until the pro j e c t
was don e . Using the war ro om cut the
s o ftw a re - d eve l o pment time by tw o -
t h i rd s ,in part because there was far less
time wasted on formal meetings or ca ll s
outside the building: the people who
ought to have been bumping into each
other were now sitting next to each other.
Two years ago,the adve rtising agency
T BWA \ C h i a t \ D ay moved into new offices
in Los An g e l e s ,out near the airp
o rt . In the preceding ye a r s , the firm
had been engaged in a ra d i ca l ,and in
s ome ways disastro u s ,e x p e riment with a
“n on t e r ri t o ri a ”o l f fic e :no one had a desk
or any office equipment of his ow n . I t
was a scheme that courted failure by neglecting
all the ways in which an office is
a sort of n e i g h b o rh o o d .By con t ra s t ,t h e
n ew office is an almost p e rfect embodiment
of Jacobsian principles of c ommu
n i ty. The agency is in a huge old
w a re h o u s e, t h ree stories high and the
s i ze of t h ree footb a ll fie l d s .It is inform
a lly known as Ad ve rtising City, a n d
t h a t’s what it is: a kind of a rt f u ly cons
t ructed urban neighborh o o d .The flo o r
is bisected by a central corridor ca ll e d
Main St re e t ,and in the center of t h e
ro om is an open space, with café tables
and a stand of ficus tre e s ,ca lled Centra l
Pa rk .T h e re’s a basketb a ll court , a game
ro om ,and a bar. Most of the employe e s
a re in snug work s t a t i ons known as nests,
and the nests are grouped together in
n e i g h b o rhoods that radiate from Main
St reet like Pa ris arron d i s s e m e n t s .T h e
top exe c u t i ves are situated in the middl e
o f the ro om .The desk belonging to the
ch a i rman and cre a t i ve director of t h e
c om p a ny looks out on Central Pa rk .T h e
o f fices of the ch i e f financial officer and
the media director abut the basketb a ll
c o u rt .Sp rinkled throughout the building
are meeting ro oms and project are a s
and plenty of n o oks where employe e s
can closet themselves when they need to.
A small part of the building is elev a t e d
a b ove the main floor on a mez za n i n e,
and if you stand there and w a t ch the
people wander about with their port a b l e
ph on e s ,and sit and chat in Central Pa rk ,
and play basketb a ll in the gym ,and you
feel on your shoulders the sun from the
s k ylights and listen to the gentle buzz
o f human activity, it is quite possible to
forget that you are looking at an offic e .
In “The Death and Life of G re a t
Am e ri can Cities,”Jacobs wrote of t h e
i m p o rtance of what she ca lled “p u b l i c
ch a racters”—people who have the so-
“T h ey’re bred for their facial ch a rac teri s t i c s . ”

6 8 THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 11, 2000
cial position and skills to orch e s t rate the
m ovement of i n f o rm a t i on and the crea
t i on of b onds of t ru s t :
A public character is anyone who is in frequent
contact with a wide circle of people
and who is sufficiently interested to make
himself a public character. . . . The director of
a settlement on New Yo r k ’s Lower East Side,
as an example, makes a regular round of
s t o res. He learns from the cleaner who does
his suits about the presence of dope pushers
in the neighborhood. He learns from the grocer
that the Dragons are working up to something
and need attention. He learns from the
candy store that two girls are agitating the
S p o rtsmen toward a rumble. One of his most
i m p o rtant information spots is an unused
b readbox on Rivington Stre e t .. . . A message
spoken there for any teen-ager within many
blocks will reach his ears unerringly and surprisingly
quickly, and the opposite flow along
the grapevine similarly brings news quickly in
to the bre a d b o x .
A vital com mu n i ty, in Jacobs’s view,
re q u i red more than the appro p ri a t e
phys i cal env i ron m e n t .It also re q u i red a
c e rtain kind of p e r s on ,who could bind
together the vari e d elements of s t re e t
l i fe .O f fices are no diffe re n t .In fact, a s
o f fice designers have attempted to cre a t e
m o re vital work p l a c e s ,t h ey have becom e
i n c re a s i n g y linterested
in identifying and
e n c o u raging public ch a ra c t e r s .
One of the pioneers in this way of
a n a lyzing offices is Ka ren St e ph e n s on ,a
b u s i n e s s - s chool pro fessor and anthropologist
who runs a New Yo rk - b a s e d
c onsulting com p a ny ca lled Ne t f o rm .
St e ph e n s on studies social netw o rk s .Sh e
goes into a com p a ny—her clients incl u d e
J. P.M o r g a n ,the Los Angeles Police Dep
a rt m e n t ,T. R. W. ,and I.B.M.—and dist
ributes a question n a i re to its employe e s ,
a s k i n g about which people they have
c ontact with.Wh om do you like to spend
time with? Wh om do you talk to about
n ew ideas? Wh e re do you go to get exp
e rt advice? Eve ry name in the com p a ny
b e c omes a dot on a gra ph ,and St e ph e ns
on draws lines between all those who
h a ve regular contact with each other.
St e ph e n s on likens her gra phs to X-rays ,
and her role to that of a ra d i o l o g i s t .Wh a t
s h e’s depicting is the firm’s invisible inner
mech a n i s m s ,the re l a t i onships and
n e tw o rks and patterns of t rust that arise
as people work together over time, and
that are hidden beneath the organiza t i on
ch a rt .O n c e,for example,St e ph e n s on was
doing an “X - ray ”o f a Head St a rt organ
i za t i on .The agency was mostly fe m a l e,
and when St e ph e n s on analyzed her net-
w o rks she found that new hires and male
s t a f fers were pro f o u n dly isolated, c ommu
n i cating with the rest of the organizat
i on through on ly a handful of w om e n .
“I looked at tenure in the organiza t i on ,
o f fice ties, d e m o g ra phic data. I couldn’t
see what tied the women together, a n d
w hy the men were talking on ly to these
w om e n , ”St e ph e n s on re ca ll s .“Nor could
the president of the organiza t i on .Sh e
g a ve me a couple of i d e a s . She said,
‘ So r ry I ca n’t fig u re it out.’ Fi n a lly, s h e
asked me to read the names again, and I
could hear her stop, and she said, ‘M y
G o d ,I know what it is.A ll those wom e n
a re smok e r s .’ ” The X-ray revealed that
the men—locked out of the form a l
p ower stru c t u re of the organiza t i on —
w e re trying to gain access and influ e n c e
by hanging out in the smoking area with
s ome of the more senior wom e n .
What St e ph e n s on’s X-rays do best,
t h o u g h ,is tell you who the public ch a racters
are . In eve ry netw o rk , t h e re are
a lw ays one or two people who have conn
e c t i ons to many more people than anyone
else. St e ph e n s on ca lls them “h u b s , ”
and on her ch a rts lines radiate out from
them like spokes on a wheel. ( B e rnie the
ca n d y - s t o re ow n e r, on Jacobs’s Hudson
St re e t ,was a hub.) A few people are also
what St e ph e n s on ca lls “g a t e k e e p e r s ” :
t h ey con t rol access to cri t i cal people, a n d
link together a strategic few dispara t e
g ro u p s .Fi n a ly,i f you analyze the gra ph s
t h e re are alw ays people who seem to
h a ve lots of i n d i rect links to other peop
l e—who are part of a ll sorts of n e tw
o rks without necessari ly being in the
center of t h e m .St e ph e n s on ca lls those
people “p u l s e t a k e r s . ” (In Si l i c on Va ll
eys p e a k ,the person in a sea of c u b i cl e s
who pops his or her head up over the
p a rt i t i on eve ry time something intere s ting
is going on is ca lled a pra i rie dog:
p ra i rie dogs are pulsetakers.)
In the past ye a r, St e ph e n s on has emb
a rked on a partnership with St e e lca
s e, the worl d’s largest manufacturer
o f o f fice furn i t u re, in order to use her
t e chniques in the design of o f fic e s .Trad
i t i on a lly, o f fice designers would tell
a com p a ny what furn i t u re should go
w h e re .St e ph e n s on and her partners at
St e e l case propose to tell a com p a ny what
people should go where, t o o. At St e e lca
s e, t h ey ca ll this “flo o r - ca s t i n g. ”
One of the first projects for the gro u p

is the exe c u t i ve level at St e e l ca s e’s headq
u a rt e r s ,a five - s t o ry building in Gra n d
Ra p i d s ,M i ch i g a n .The exe c u t i ve leve l ,
on the fourth flo o r, is a large,open ro om
filled with small work s t a t i on s . ( Ji m
H a ck e t t ,the head of the com p a ny, o ccupies
what St e e l case ca lls a Pe r s on a l
H a rb o r, a black , f reestanding metal
module that may be—at seven feet by
eight—the smallest office of a Fo rt u n e
500 C.E.O.) One aft e rn o on re c e n t ly,
St e ph e n s on pulled out a laptop and
d e m on s t ra t e dh ow she had mapped the
c om mu n i ca t i on netw o rks of the leadership
group onto a seating ch a rt of t h e
f o u rth flo o r. The dots and swirls are
s t ra n g e ly com p e ll i n g — a b s t ract re p res
e n t a t i ons of s omething real and immed
i a t e .One exe c u t i ve, close to Hack e t t ,
was inundated with lines from eve ry dire
c t i on .“H e’s a hub, a gatekeeper, and a
pulsetaker across all sorts of d i f fe rent dim
e n s i on s , ”St e ph e n s on said.“What that
t e lls you is that he is ve ry stra t e g i c .I f
t h e re is no succession planning aro u n d
that person ,you have got a huge risk to
the knowledge base of this com p a ny. I f
h e’s in a plane accident, t h e re goes yo u r
k n ow l e d g e . ”She pointed to another part
o f the floor plan, with its own thick
ove rl ay of l i n e s .“T h a t’s sales and mark
e t i n g.T h ey have a pocket of real innov
a t i on here .The guy who runs it is ve ry
go o d ,ve ry smart . ”But then she pointed
to the lines connecting that depart m e n t
with other depart m e n t s . “T h ey’re all
c oming into this one place, ” she said,
and she showed how all the lines com i n g
out of m a rketing converged on one senior
exe c u t i ve .“T h e re’s ve ry little path
re d u n d a n cy. In human sys t e m s , yo u
need re d u n d a n cy, you need com mu n i cat
i on across multiple paths.” What conc
e rned St e ph e n s on wasn’t just the lack of
re d u n d a n cy but the fact that, in her
l i n go, m a ny of the paths were “u n c onfirm
e d” :t h ey went on ly one way.Pe o p l e
in marketing were saying that they commu
n i cated with the senior management,
but there were n’t as many lines going
in the other dire c t i on .The sales-andm
a rketing team, she explained, h a d
s om e h ow become isolated from senior
m a n a g e m e n t . T h ey couldn’t get their
voices heard when it came to innov at
i on—and that fact,she said, ought to be
a big con s i d e ra t i on when it comes time
to redo the offic e .“I f you ask the guy who
heads sales and marketing who he wants
to sit next to,h e’ll pick out all the people
he tru s t s , ”she said. “But do you sit him
with those people? No. What you want
to do is put people who don’t trust each
other near each other. Not necessari ly
next to each other, b e cause they get too
cl o s e .But close enough so that when yo u
pop your head up, you get to see people,
t h ey are in your path,and all of a sudden
you build an inviting space where they
can hang out, k i t chens and things like
t h a t .M aybe they need to take a hub in
an innov a t i on netw o rk and place the
p e r s on with a pulsetaker in an expert
n e tw o rk—to get that knowledge indire
c t ly com mu n i cated to a lot of p e o p l e . ”
The work of t ranslating St e ph e n s on’s
insights onto a new floor plan is being
done in a small con fe rence ro om — a
THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 11, 2000 6 9

7 0 THE NEW YO R K E R, DECEMBER 11, 2000
war ro om — on the second floor of St e e lcase
h e a d q u a rt e r s .The group consists of
a few k ey people from diffe rent parts of
the firm , s u ch as human re s o u rc e s ,d es
i g n ,t e ch n o l o gy, and space-planning res
e a rch. The walls of the ro om are cl u tt
e red with diagrams and pictures and
ca l c u l a t i ons and huge, b l ownup ve r s i on s
o f St e ph e n s on’s X-rays .Team members
s t ress that what they are doing is experim
e n t a l .T h ey don’t know yet how dire
c t ly they want to translate fin d i n g s
f rom the com mu n i ca t i ons netw o rks to
o f fice plans. A fter all , you don’t want to
h a ve to redo the entire office eve ry time
s om e one leaves or joins the com p a ny.
But it’s clear that there are some ve ry
simple principles from the study of p u blic
ch a racters which ought to dri ve the
design pro c e s s .“You want to place hubs
at the center, ” J oyce Brom b e r g, the director
of space planning, s ays . “T h e s e
a re the ones other people go to in ord e r
to get inform a t i on .G i ve them an env ironment
that all ows access. But there
a re also going to be times that they need
to have con t rol—so give them a place
w h e re they can get away. G a t e k e e p e r s
re p resent the fit between gro u p s .T h ey
t ransmit ideas. T h ey are brok e r s ,so yo u
might want to put them at the peri m e t e r,
and give them front porch e s ” — a reas adjoining
the workspace where you might
p u t little tables and ch a i r s. “M aybe they
could have swinging doors with white
b o a rd s ,to better transmit inform a t i on .
As for pulsetakers, t h ey are the ro a m -
e r s . Rather than give them one fixe d
w o rk loca t i on ,you might give them a series
of t o u ch d own spots—where yo u
want them to stop and talk.You want to
enable their meanderi n g. ”
One of the other team members was
a tall ,thoughtful man named Frank Graz
i a n o. He had a series of pencil dra wings—with
circles re p resenting work s t at
i ons of a ll the people whose minds,as he
put it, he wanted to make “e x p l i c i t . ”H e
said that he had done the plan the night
b e f o re .“I think we can thread innov a t i on
t h rough the flo o r, ”he went on ,and with
a pen drew a red line that wound its way
t h rough the maze of d e s k s .It was his
H u d s on St re e t .
“ The Death and Life of G reat Am e ri
can Cities” was a con t rove r s i a l
b o ok ,l a r g e ly because there was alw ays
a whiff o f p a t e rnalism in Jacobs’s vi-
s i on of what city life ought to be. C h e lsea—the
neighborhood dire c t ly to the
n o rth of her beloved West Vi ll a g e—
had “m i x t u res and types of b u i l d i n g s
and densities of d w e lling units per
a c re . . . almost identical with those of
G re e nw i ch Vi ll a g e, ”she noted. But its
l on g - p redicted renaissance would neve r
h a p p e n ,she maintained, b e cause of t h e
“b a r riers of l on g, self-isolating block s . ”
She hated Chatham Vi ll a g e, a planned
“g a rden city ”d eve l o pment in Pi t t s b u r g h .
It was a picturesque green encl a ve, but
it suffe re d , in Jacobs’s analys i s , f rom a
l a ck of s i d ewalk life . She wasn’t conc
e rned that some people might not
want an active street life in their neighb
o rh o o d ; that what she saw as the
“s e l f -isolating block s ”o f Chelsea others
would see as a welcome respite from
the bustle of the city, or that Chatham
Vi llage would appeal to some people
p re c i s e ly because one did not encounter
on its sidewalks a “solid wave of c onve rs
a t i on and animation . ” Jacobs felt that
c i ty dwellers belonged in env i ron m e n t s
like the West Vi ll a g e, whether they rea
l i zed it or not.
The new workplace designers are
making the same ca l c u l a t i on ,o fc o u r s e .
The point of the new offices is to
c ompel us to behave and socialize in
w ays that we otherwise would not—
to ove rc ome our initial incl i n a t i on to
be office suburb a n i t e s .B u t , in all the
studies of the new work p l a c e s , t h e
re s e rv a t i ons that employees have about
a more social env i ronment tend to diminish
once they try it. Human behavi
o r, a fter all , is shaped by con t e x t , b u t
h ow it is shaped—and whether we’ll
be happy with the result—we can understand
on ly with experi e n c e . Jane
Jacobs knew the virtues of the We s t
Vi llage because she lived there . Wh a t
she couldn’t know was that her ideas
about com mu n i ty would ultimately
make more sense in the work p l a c e .
From time to time, social critics have
bemoaned the falling rates of c om mun
i ty part i c i p a t i on in Am e ri can life, b u t
t h ey have made the same mistake. T h e
re a s on Am e ri cans are content to bow l
a l one (or, for that matter, not bowl at
a ll) is that, i n c re a s i n g ly, t h ey re c e i ve all
the social support they need—all the
s e rendipitous intera c t i ons that serve to
make them happy and pro d u c t i ve—
f rom nine to five. ♦